Top 10 Best Affiliate Programs Available Online

Starting your journey towards becoming a successful affiliate marketer is not easy. There is a staggering number of affiliate programs that you can choose from. Working with the best affiliate programs is essential to your success.

A good affiliate network will provide you with the best ad creative options, promotional material, reporting tools, affiliate offers and most importantly, they’ll be reliable with their payouts.

To help you get started in the right direction, here is a list of the top 10 affiliate programs online in no particular order.

The Most Effective Affiliate Programs to Consider

1. Clickbank

Clickbank is the leading Internet retailer of digital products. If you’re looking to promote digital products like eBooks, videos, audios, software programs, services and private membership sites, you should start your search with Clickbank.

You’ll be able to find a digital product across multiple categories such as entertainment, computers, investing, business, education, food, and health. While you can also find physical products to promote, Clickbank’s mainly known for their digital catalog.

2. CJ Affiliate by Conversant

CJ is the largest affiliate program in terms of the number of affiliate advertisers that are on their network. This means that affiliates have many options regarding what they can promote.

The network provides a lot of flexibility in how you can display your ads and track your campaigns. What makes CJ one of the better affiliate programs is the fact that they are very reliable with their payouts.

This is important to many affiliate marketers that invest in advertising and need to make sure that their cash flow remains stable.

3. Amazon Associates

Amazon is the largest eCommerce site in the world. Amazon provides an enormous selection of physical products and various services you can promote.

While many affiliates complain about the fairly low commission rates, Amazon’s products convert well, and it’s the go-to eCommerce site for consumers.

Amazon is best for affiliates that have websites which bring in respectable traffic volumes on a regular basis. It can be hard to make good earnings for affiliates that rely on advertising for traffic.

4. eBay Affiliate Program

eBay is still the most popular online auction site. People are still using eBay to look for great deals on new and used products. eBay’s affiliate program can be a great way to add alternative affiliate display ads to your site.

Many affiliates use eBay to support their affiliate income rather than depend on it as a primary source of their income. It is worth testing eBay’s affiliate program against Amazon’s to see which network results in higher earnings.

5. Shareasale

Shareasale is one of the oldest affiliate programs and has the most flexible offers. You can find products and services that offer percentage sales, flat rate per sale, cost per click (CPC) and cost per acquisition (CPA).

Shareasale is known for having strong conversion rates for their products and services site wide. Moreover, their payout rates are very competitive and among the highest for multiple industries.

If you’re promoting physical products or plan on doing so, you should check out Shareasale. Amazon may not always be the best affiliate program for physical products.

6. Rakuten Linkshare

Rakuten is one of oldest affiliate networks. It is often seen as an alternative affiliate network for the affiliate that wants to look for merchants and products that cannot be found on the other major networks.

One of the better features of Rakuten is their deep linking and rotating banner options. These features can lead to higher conversions and allow affiliates to optimize their campaigns faster and with more ease.

While the network is smaller than CJ, it’s definitely a network you want to check out.

8. Media.net

Media.net is a contextual ad network similar to Google Adsense. What makes them relevant to affiliates is the fact that they have a low traffic minimum with fairly high payouts.

This can be a great solution for website owners that do not receive much traffic but to find a way to monetize their site. They offer a wide variety of display ad units and offer great reporting features.

Many affiliates report that Media.net performs similarly to Adsense regarding earnings. The great part about Media.net is that one can use it with Google Adsense as long as the ads are not designed to look like Google’s ads.

9. Clickbooth

Clickbooth is purely a CPA network. Also, it is different from other affiliate programs in that it is purely focused on paying out affiliates based on an acquisition. This can be anything from free trial offers to form submissions.

The concept is very attractive to many affiliates that want to promote offers that do not require consumers to make a full purchase. Clickbooth is the leading CPA network in the industry.

They’ve been known for having a great track record in terms of providing affiliates the largest number of offers. Furthermore, they give affiliates dedicated support, offering the best affiliate tools and paying affiliates on time.

10. Google Adsense

Not every website is suited for affiliate offers. However, website owners can still monetize their traffic using Google Adsense. Google Adsense is an advertising network where you serve rotating ad units on your website.

Every time a visitor clicks on the ad, you earn a percentage of the cost that the advertiser paid for the ad. Moreover, Google Adsense provides excellent reporting features that are easy to use and understand.

Bottom Line

While this list should be enough to get you started, there are many other great affiliate programs out there. Some of the private affiliate programs might be a better fit for your market and website, but they do come with some risk.

To conclude with, these affiliate networks became popular for being reliable and paying their affiliates properly. You can’t go wrong working with any of the networks on this list.